


Roof Talk

by vanilla_villain37 (van1lla_v1lla1n)



Series: multichapter modern aus (reylo) [5]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Bisexual!Rey, Christian!Ben, Criticisms of religion, Dominant Rey, F/F, F/M, Frottage, Fruit, Guilt, Homelessness, Light Angst, Light Dom/sub, Mentions of homophobia, No Pregnancy, Oral Sex, Past Abuse, Praise Kink, Religious Conflict, Religious Guilt, Smut, Submissive Ben Solo, Vaginal Fingering, Wet Dream, all smut is sober!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:54:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25211983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/van1lla_v1lla1n/pseuds/vanilla_villain37
Summary: Ben goes up to the roof of his apartment building to chill out and pray some evenings, feeling close to God under the night sky. But when he befriends a young woman who starts showing up there too, he's forced to confront the hypocrisies of his church, and his own doubts, in ways he didn't expect and frankly didn't really want.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: multichapter modern aus (reylo) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859416
Comments: 66
Kudos: 145
Collections: Queerly Beloved Reylo Fics, The Sub!Ben Collection





	1. Don't Call Me Boring

**Author's Note:**

> Adorable rooftop geeselo art by musical_milk allll the way back in the fic endnotes! ~check the talent~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some heavier stuff than I usually do here, friends; please see chapter endnotes for content warnings <3

The first time Ben had come up to the roof he’d paused a long time at the door, staring hard at the red letters spelling “Authorized Personnel Only.” But in the night air he’d felt so close to God with no ceiling caging him in, his prayers floating freely up to heaven, and so he didn’t stop going.

The first time Rey had shown up there, in his space, he’d been shocked into silence, frustrated with his own indignance at the intrusion. He’d glanced at her grin and felt she was laughing at him; he’d glanced at her bare knees and the shame of his weakness burned. When he stood up and brushed the dirt off the knees of his slacks he felt her watching him.

She tapped a cigarette out of a box and he didn’t think she was there to pray. He wanted to be alone there, alone with God, but maybe through his actions he could help her, teach her. So he didn’t stop going.

* * *

“Want a sip?” She leans forward, proffering her beer bottle. He watches the condensation drip and shakes his head.

“Why?” She is always asking why.

“I don’t want to feel out of control,” he says.

“You won’t get drunk off a sip.”

He shrugs. “People do stupid things when they drink.”

“Nothing they don’t want to do when they’re sober,” she says.

Her lawn chair creaks. She asks, “Are you afraid of what’s inside your head?”

* * *

She’s brought a bowl of sliced fruit up to the roof, and she’s just sitting there reading, absentmindedly fumbling in the bowl between her legs for more.

Ben sits down in his chair, a bleached-out beach lounger, across from her. He doesn’t recognize the book she’s reading, but then it’s been a while since he read anything that wasn’t related to a bible study he was in, and he doubts she’d read anything like that.

He knows he’s staring, but she hasn’t looked up; maybe she hasn’t realized he’s here. Or maybe she has and she thinks he’s a creep and is too afraid to say it. She brings a slice of peach to her open mouth, but she just rests it on her lower lip, like she’s forgotten it.

A drip of juice slides down her finger, and she shoves the whole slice in her mouth, licking her lower lip, each of her fingers. Something like jealousy stirs in his gut, and a heaviness grows in his crotch that he tries desperately to ignore. He looks away hurriedly, feeling more and more convinced of his creepiness.

He stares at the buildings across the street, willing his arousal to let up. She was only eating; what kind of pervert was he that he could watch a woman eat and get an erection? He hears Reverend Snoke tsking him, the voice in his head quiet with mocking disappointment. And like that his deep need gives way to sickening shame.

Just then Rey looks up to see him, says, “Ben! Fruit?” She holds out her bowl.

He just shakes his head.

“Fruit against the Jesus code too now?” she asks, smiling. She’s teasing, he thinks, and there should be an easy answer. But there isn’t.

* * *

Ben goes to the bible study for single men that week, and the lesson is framed in 2 Corinthians 6:14, about being “equally yoked.” Reverend Snoke reminds the group that they are not to live “by the cravings of their flesh,” and that those who do live in rebellion from God. To be a real Christian, one who truly and fully submits to the Holy Spirit, one can never be in a relationship with a non-believer.

Surely God is speaking to Ben through the pastor, reminding him of his natural existence as a child of wrath, of wretched wickedness, when he is apart from God. And no matter how smart, how lovely Rey may seem, she is, to God, an unclean thing.

* * *

“I dreamed you were a demon,” he tells her.

She smirks. “Sorry to disappoint,” she says. In the dream he had not been disappointed, and he blushes.

“Do you believe in demons?” he asks.

“Nope.”

“Are you an atheist?” He feels childish, asking it that way, but he can’t help himself.

“Atheist agnostic, maybe,” she says.

“You can’t be both.”

“Sure I can,” she says. “I don’t know whether there’s a god or not, but if you put a gun to my head and made me choose I’d say there isn’t.”

“Why?”

“My foster father was a deacon,” she tells him. “If I refused to go to church with him he locked me in the pantry until he got back. So I went, usually. The only thing that felt different when I quit listening to the sermons was I didn’t have to feel guilty for being myself anymore.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ben says. “The guilt is there for a reason.”

“And what’s the reason?”

“To show you what you shouldn’t do. How can you have morals without the Bible?”

“It turns out that I love people a lot better when I’m thinking about what’ll hurt them and trying not to do that, instead of trying to abide by a list of arcane rules. And why shouldn’t I love myself at the same time? Why would god give you a body and say, ‘Don’t touch this, don’t enjoy it, and don’t enjoy anyone else’s either’?”

“He never said that. He just specified the circumstances it’s healthy in.”

“And those involve loving only a man and putting everything that man wants and everything he needs above anything I need?”

Ben stares at the dark skyline.

“I had a crush on a girl in my Sunday school class,” Rey says, quietly. “We read Song of Solomon and in my head it was about her. ‘Like a rose among thorns’ or whatever. Plutt beat me when her parents told him I kissed her.”

Ben is so lost, because he didn’t think she was gay, but maybe she is. Then he catches up, and he looks at her. “Plutt?”

“My foster father.”

“But he’s a deacon at my church.”

Rey pauses. “I know.”

* * *

Rey leans on the retaining wall in front of his chair.

“Why don’t you ever look at me? Do you look at anyone?”

His face burns. She must have seen his leering glances at her wrists, her ankles, the way he can’t keep his eyes from drifting down her neck sometimes when she leans back in her chair to stare at the sky.

“I don’t want to disrespect you,” he says.

“What if I want you to look at me?”

“You’re a person,” he says, “not just a body.”

“I can be both, I think.”

Dirt has blown up against the wall in the wind, making little drifts in the corner behind her bare feet.

“It’s a sin to lust,” he says.

“Even if I agreed with that, which I don’t, couldn’t you choose _not_ to lust? Does the existence of a nice body _force_ you to do it?”

“Why do you dress that way?” he asks. He prays that God will spare him from the soft peaks of her breasts in her too-tight shirt, always just outside his focus.

“Because I like it,” she says, “because it’s my choice.”

“Well, it’s not my choice to lust after you.”

“But isn’t it?”

He looks at her then—the dirt on her feet, the soft hair on her shins in the moonlight, the red marks on her thighs where the hem of her shorts has shifted—and he regrets it.

When she turns to leave he doesn’t look away fast enough and he sees the way the seam of her shorts has ridden up to frame the roundness of her butt and he blinks hard, presses the heels of his palms into his eye sockets.

The sky feels too thin a veil from God’s judgment.

* * *

Before sunrise, Ben’s drowsy head is full of Rey. She sits naked in her chair on the roof, a bowl of fruit between her legs. Her mouth is red with juice from the berries, her fingers sticky. She licks them one by one, her gaze soft on him.

He’s kneeling, and she stands in front of him and presses a cherry between his lips. She licks the sweetness from his mouth, presses his head between her legs; he licks up the nectar there, his hips rutting against his mattress.

He wakes up hot and sticky and nauseous.

* * *

“Why do you smoke cigarettes?” he asks her. It’s his turn to ask why. “You have to know it’s bad for you.”

“Sometimes that’s the point, isn’t it? To make yourself feel bad.” She leans out over the wall and lets smoke drift up from her mouth and Ben looks away.

“Today,” she says, “this is my communion with the universe. I roll the world up in a guilty little package and inhale it and make myself feel shitty and spit it back out. And then I do it all over again.”

Usually Rey is the first to leave from the roof, and Ben stays out a little later to pray and reflect and repent. But tonight she is as quiet and contemplative as he is. When he finishes his prayer he realizes she’s fallen asleep in her chair.

She doesn’t wake up to her name but to a tap on her wrist.

“I’m going down now,” he says. “I didn’t want to leave you sleeping here. I don’t think it’s safe.”

She rests her head against the back of the chair, closes her eyes again. “Haven’t had any trouble yet,” she mumbles.

He sits back down. “What do you mean, ‘yet’?”

“Got evicted. Been sleeping up here a few nights.”

“But . . . how?”

She sighs, sits forward to scrub her face. “That’s what happens when you can’t pay rent, Ben.”

“Have you tried the shelter?”

She looks at him, her gaze harsh. “The shelter run by the church where my abusive ex–foster father is a deacon, or the other shelter?”

“There’s not another shelter,” he says, and blinks hard at his own stupidity.

“Please let me sleep. I have to work tomorrow.”

“You can’t—” he pauses at Rey’s raised eyebrow. “It doesn’t feel right to let you sleep out here. Anyone could find you. It really isn’t safe.”

“Well, this is my best option, so.”

“You can sleep in my apartment. I’ll sleep up here.”

Her sharp laugh shocks him. “I’m not kicking you out of your own apartment, that’s absurd. I know you think I don’t have morals, but I do, and that would definitely go against them.”

Ben hesitates. His hands are sweating, at the thought of her in his apartment, sleeping in his apartment, a closed door away.

“I have a couch,” he says, and she looks straight into his eyes. “You can sleep there.”

The living room is too small for both of them. Rey sits at his kitchen table as he gathers a spare sheet and blanket and pillow. He fills her a glass of water and drinks it himself, not knowing how to give it to her.

What do girls—women—sleep in? All Rey has with her is a backpack. If he comes out of his room in the morning to find her naked on his couch he will surely die.

“Do you need, um, pajamas? Or something to sleep in?”

“I have clothes, thanks,” she says.

He’s relieved and disappointed and embarrassed about all of it. He leaves a clean glass on the counter by the sink and goes to bed, easing his door shut as quietly as he can.

* * *

Rey is gone when he gets up the next morning, still gone when he gets home. He eats leftovers, paces the apartment until ten minutes after he normally goes up to the roof.

“You didn’t have to leave,” he tells her.

“I had work, too,” she reminds him, and he feels silly for thinking the reason might have been about anything else.

His chair creaks.

“Is it alright if I stay again?” she asks.

He hesitates and as the silence grows he hates himself for it. He wants her there but he is afraid. Afraid of her body in his space, afraid of her questions.

“Of course,” he says. He feels her looking at him.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know why you’re afraid of me. I wish you weren’t.”

“I’m not.” She stares. He goes on, “Maybe I am. But not of you. I’m afraid of . . . of being seduced. I guess.”

“You think I’m trying to _seduce_ you?”

She sounds so incredulous, he winces. Arrogant, foolish of him to think she might want to.

“Not on purpose. It’s just how you dress, how you are,” he says.

“Just how I am. Like a demon.” She shakes her head. “Do you think I spend all my time just trying to get you to sin? Do you not think I do things sometimes just because I want to do them for myself?”

After she leaves he prays for forgiveness for his stupidity, his arrogance, for hurting her feelings, for blaming her for his own shortcomings.

The claws in his chest release when he finds her reading on his couch. He sits on the other end.

“I was rude,” he says. “You’re not a demon. And my thoughts aren’t your fault.”

She nods slightly but doesn’t speak.

“I’m sorry.” He pauses. “Please stay, if you still want to.”

She looks up then, says, “I forgive you,” and he feels more absolved than he has in his entire life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a good bit of critical discussion of Protestantism and a healthy dose of religious guilt here. If that's not your jam then you might want to skip this one! 
> 
> CW also for discussions of verbal and physical abuse by a foster parent, including under the influence of alcohol. Rey no longer lives with her foster father but he does live nearby and there's ongoing risk that she might run into him.


	2. It's Just Cause I Like You

Ben wakes up and it is Wednesday, and Rey is already gone. He wishes she would stay for breakfast, to share the coffee he can never finish.

When he gets home from work, he doesn’t change clothes to go to his bible study, his biweekly meeting with Reverend Snoke. He sits on the couch, leans against Rey’s stack of folded blankets, and the smell of her on the pillow is so soothing, so intoxicating he falls asleep.

He wakes up hard, disoriented, when his apartment door creaks open. Rey is standing there and he’s basically in her bed.

“I’m sorry,” he says, face aflame. “I’ll get you a new pillow.”

“Sure,” she says. She sits next to him before he can stand up. “It’s Wednesday. Don’t you normally have church stuff?”

“I couldn’t go.” He scrubs his face. “Deacon Plutt is in my bible study. I don’t think I can be in a room with him, knowing what he did to you.”

He orders pizza, Rey’s request, and she puts on a TV show he’s never seen. The characters curse a lot, and he tries not to wince.

After she scarfs down her fourth slice of pizza, she slouches back and says, “God, I could kill for a beer right now.”

“Sorry,” he says; he doesn’t have any. Rey laughs and slaps his knee.

“No, I’m sorry—I sound so ungrateful. Here you are feeding me and housing me and I’m complaining. Thank you.” She leans over and hugs him sideways and her hair smells just like her pillow had and then she lets go and he is bereft.

He brings her a new pillowcase, shoves her old one under dirty laundry in his hamper.

* * *

On his way home from work Thursday he stops by a liquor store he’s seen. The last time he had beer, he was twelve years old and stealing a sip from his father’s can, blushing furiously when his father walked in to find him gagging at the taste.

The cashier raises her eyebrows when he sets the basket of two dozen single bottles on the checkout counter.

She clears her throat. “Find everything okay?”

He nods, thanks her, and fidgets while she finds a box to stand all the bottles up in. He hopes no one from the church is in the neighboring stores as he clinks out to his car with the vodka box.

When Rey gets home she goes to the fridge before he can stop her, scrounging for the leftover pizza, and her face goes so bright he loses his breath.

“Ben, what is all this?”

“I wasn’t sure what kind you liked,” he says, embarrassed at his excess. But before he can apologize Rey’s body is against his, her arms around his neck, her voice saying _thank you_ in his ear.

She chooses a bottle and pours it into two glasses, hoists herself up onto his counter.

He stares at the bubbly amber liquid, and before he catches himself he asks, “Did your foster father—Deacon Plutt—did he drink when he beat you?”

Rey stills. “Sometimes,” she says.

“You’re not afraid of it?” he asks.

“Of alcohol? Alcohol didn’t beat me. Plutt did. He didn’t do anything to me drunk that he didn’t already have in his mind to do when he was sober.”

She holds out her glass, says, “Let’s have a toast. Your first drink, yes?”

He nods, stretches out his arm, and she clinks her glass against his, says, “To firsts.” The beer is cool in his throat, and he thanks god he doesn’t gag at the taste like he had when he was twelve.

Two half-beers later, Rey sits him down on the couch, crossing her legs and facing him.

“Tell me how your body feels,” she says. “Does it feel different?”

He struggles to figure out what she means. Is he supposed to feel a certain way? Is he supposed to be drunk already, or not?

“There’s not a right answer,” she says. “I just want to know how you feel, trying a new thing.”

He swallows. “I feel . . . heavier. But in a cozy way. My hands feel warm. I feel like it’s easier to talk.” He takes a breath, says, “My chest aches.”

Rey leans forward, presses her small hand to his sternum. “Here?” she asks.

He nods; he can’t get enough air to speak. She rests her forehead on his shoulder, rubs small slow circles on his chest. He hopes she can’t feel how fast his heart is beating.

“Does that help?” she whispers, and he nods again, even though he doesn’t think she can see it. Is this sexual? He doesn’t know, and he hopes it is and he hopes it isn’t. The guilt is creeping in, its shadowy little fingers grasping at the sweet bubble of joy in his chest.

Rey tilts her head to the side, her other hand sliding up his spine, and when the warmth of her hand skims over the collar of his shirt he hears his breath shuddering in his throat. Her nails scratch lightly at the base of his scalp and he closes his eyes, rests his head against the back of the couch.

“Okay?” she asks. The only sound he trusts himself to make is a soft hum. “Ben, is this okay?”

He lifts his head and swallows, whispers, “Yes, sorry.”

She pulls him sideways, until she’s leaning back against the armrest and his head is on her chest. Her hands are rubbing his neck, playing through his hair, and there is nothing he can do to escape the view of her breasts.

He feels his erection heavy against her leg and he shifts his hips away, but he’s caught between her and the couch. He mumbles _sorry_ , starts to sit up, but Rey holds on to his shoulders, gently pressing him back down.

She strokes his head. “It’s okay,” she says softly. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

He wraps an arm over her waist, his other arm caught beneath him. He’ll cut off the circulation laying like this but he doesn’t care. She runs her fingers through his hair, rubs his neck and his shoulders, until his breathing slows and deepens.

She whispers his name. “Time for bed.” He wants to pretend to be asleep. Wants to beg her to sleep in his bed.

“What time do you have to leave for work?” he asks.

“I try to leave by 6:30.”

“Please don’t leave early,” he says. “I’ll make you breakfast.” He sits up on his elbow to look into her face, and she slides her fingertip down his nose, her gaze stalling at his mouth.

And then she sits up to let him move past, and she says _good night_ , and he’s alone in his own bed.

* * *

She eats toast and blackberries silently, still too sleepy to talk. Her hair is wet; she’s been using his shower, has been naked in his apartment, and he hadn’t even realized it.

They finish the coffee.

She kisses his cheek when she leaves.

* * *

After dinner Rey collapses on the couch; Ben sits at the opposite end, not knowing what she expects. His body has ached for her all day. When she pulls him over to her he’s so relieved he doesn’t think to hesitate. They’d shared more beer and his head feels pleasantly light.

He rests his head on her chest and listens to her breath in her lungs. He lets his free hand stroke her side, and when it brushes over the exposed skin at her waist he feels her breathing quicken. He feels her fingers slip under his collar at his neck, feels goosebumps rise at her soft touch.

He wants Rey to feel good, wants to take care of her body the way she has taken care of his.

“Do you want me to touch you?” he asks. Her hand stills behind his ear.

“More than this?”

“If you want,” he says. He takes a deep breath. “I want you to feel good. If I can do that for you.”

She pushes on his shoulder and he sits up fast, already blushing and fearing he’s overstepped. But Rey is moving with him, coming up on her knees to straddle his lap, her butt perched back toward his knees.

She holds his head to her chest, says, “I want that so much. But I don’t want you to feel bad.”

“I don’t think I would,” he says, “if it was for you.”

She tugs his head back and looks into his face, her hands on his cheeks. “If you do, just say something, or pat my back, and we’ll stop. Okay?” He nods.

“Will you show me what to do?” he asks. She says _yes_ , her lips already brushing against his, and then she’s kissing him. Her mouth is warm and soft like her body in his hands, and when she slips her tongue into his mouth, his erection throbs at the taste of her. He’s glad she’s kept her hips away from him so she won’t feel how excited he already is.

But then she slides her hips forward, spreading her thighs wider over him, and she makes a high sound against his mouth when she presses herself over his erection. His hands tighten at her hips to push her away, but she says, “God, you’re so hard already, so good for me, Ben,” and his heart stutters in his chest.

She puts his hands on her breasts over her shirt, and he squeezes them softly, rubs his thumbs over her nipples, watching her face. He doesn’t think she’s wearing a bra; the thought that he could touch her bare skin if he wanted makes him even harder. She’s rocking her hips against him and the rhythmic pressure is almost too much.

Rey tears off her shirt, and when he recovers enough to lick at one of her nipples she holds his head tight against her.

“Suck,” she tells him, and he does, and her nails are scratching ecstasy at the base of his skull. She moans in his ear, ruts her hips down harder.

“Will you finger me? Please?” He’s not sure if she means over her clothes or inside her but if she wants it he’ll do it, and he releases her breast to look up at her and say _yes_.

Rey stands up and all at once her shorts are on the floor and she’s naked back in his lap. She kisses him softly, lifts his wrist to slide his index finger into her mouth, just the way she’d licked her own fingers on the roof.

“Okay?” she asks, and he nods, his other hand gripping tight at her hip. She cups his hand and moves it slowly down her body. She presses his index finger into the most hidden part of her; she’s so hot inside, and wet. She slides their fingers up, through her labia, and circles her clit.

“I want your fingers inside me,” she says. He slides his finger back down and her hand around his wrist presses him up into her. “Two,” she says, pulling his finger back out, and when he extends the second she sinks down onto both.

“Fuck me with them,” she says, and he winces away his reaction to that vulgarity. She notices, kisses him again, and looking into his face says softly, “I just want you to move them. Is that okay?”

He pulls his fingers out slowly, and her breathing quickens, and she nods. “Yes. Now back in. Press forward just a little.” He tries to slide his fingertips up against the front wall of her.

“Good,” she says. “Keep doing that. Just like that.” She rests her forehead on his shoulder, brings one of her hands up to her clit. After a moment she raises her hand to his mouth, and when she slips her fingers inside he can taste her on them and his eyes flutter shut.

“Thank you,” she says, and slips her hand back down between them. She rests her head back on his shoulder, and as her hips begin to rock over him he speeds up his fingers to match.

“Yes, Ben, just like that,” she says. “ _Fuck_. Shit, sorry. Good, you’re doing so good.” She bites down hard on his shoulder through his shirt. And then she growls, and he feels her tightening on his fingers, and she’s almost slamming herself down onto them. Her breath comes in harsh gasps in his ear as she slows down, and he tries to keep his fingers still as he feels her squeezing them inside her, her hips moving gently over him.

She sits up, chest heaving, and wraps her hand around his wrist to pull his fingers out from her.

“Do you want to taste?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. “Please.” And he opens to let her press his own fingers into his mouth, to suck the taste of her from them. His hips shift up as he does it, chasing pressure.

He catches her hand when she starts to move it toward his erection, and she freezes, looking up at him.

“It’s okay,” he says.

“Later, maybe?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. Even the idea of her touching him fills him with dread right now, with nausea at how much he wants it.

“Will you sleep in my room?” he asks. Her lips on his forehead, she says, “I would love that.”

* * *

On Sunday Ben’s body wakes him up at 7:00, and he wishes it hadn’t, because now he has to make decisions.

He rolls over to look at Rey, still asleep on her one day off, stripes of sunlight from between the blinds just missing her eyelids. And he sees that she is _good_. Lovely and smart, as he’s always known.

By his church’s definitions, he can never truly love her, never truly be intimate with her, because she doesn’t believe what he does. Their souls can never get past their metaphysical war. But the people at his church will never be able to see the real Rey. If he brought her to church with him today, they would see only her body, sin made physical in it—not her.

He makes coffee and she wakes up to the smell of it.

* * *

His phone rings and he turns it over on the coffee table.

“If you never answer they’re just going to keep calling,” Rey says.

“I don’t know what to tell them yet.”

He feels guilty for not answering, shame for doing the obvious thing—for being a good, gullible Christian who falls for a nonbeliever, even though he doesn’t really believe that’s what’s happening.

But he also feels a rage he hasn’t let himself feel for a long time, in his attempts to avoid being a child of wrath. When he thinks about walking in to a bible study and seeing Deacon Plutt pontificating on loving-kindness he feels rage. When he thinks about Reverend Snoke, who taught him to feel so much shame in his body, he feels rage.

Maybe next time they call he’ll answer, and he’ll ask them if they ever think about Jesus overturning the tables at the temple.

* * *

“I wish we could feel good at the same time,” he tells her.

She rolls over to her side to face him. “We can,” she says. “I’ll lay on my back, and you’ll lay on top of me, the other way, and we can put our mouths on each other at the same time.”

“Would you like that?” he asks. It doesn’t seem like having his penis in her mouth is something she should enjoy.

She smiles. “Definitely.” She kisses him slowly and arranges her body for him, but he sits by her head.

“Will you be able to breathe?”

“I will. But if I have trouble I’ll tap you like this.” She pats his thigh. “And if you want me to stop you can just lift your hips away and I’ll stop.”

“Where should I . . .”

“In my mouth, if we get to that, if you want to. Or whatever you feel like.”

He crawls over her, feeling so exposed with his half-erection hanging over her face like this. He focuses as hard as he can between her legs, a new angle for his favorite gift to give her. As he licks her she gently pulls his hips down to take him into her mouth, and he closes his eyes.

She breathes over him, darts her tongue out over just the tip of him, and her mouth is warm and wet but the pleasure is all tied up in his gut with shame, that he could debase her this way, that he could enjoy it. He furrows his brow and sucks on her clit, concentrates on the sensation of her smooth slickness on his fingertip below.

When she puts her mouth over him he pulls away, breathing hard, and she rubs his hip. He kisses her inner thighs and lets her pull him back down to her mouth. He can hear her murmuring, but he can’t make out the words over the air conditioner. But it feels good all the same.

He can imagine what she would say, what she’s said to him many times: _good, you are good, Ben, I love this, beautiful like this, just like that, yes, good good good good good._ He read once that dogs could tell the difference between nice words and mean ones even if you try to use the same voice.

She has the head of him in her mouth now, licking slowly over it, and when he slips his fingertip inside her, rubbing up like she taught him, she moans around his erection and the vibration chases all the way up his spine. He relaxes his knees and she pulls him further into her mouth.

If he can focus on her—on stroking her clit slow with his tongue, sliding his finger in and out of her, nibbling and sucking at her labia—he can feel how good she feels through her mouth on him, the way she lets go to gasp, the way she sucks hard when he does something she really likes. He tries to give her pleasure and to borrow hers, replacing his own, tainted as it is with shame.

She bends her knees to press her hips harder against his mouth, holding his hips still over her so she can slide her mouth over him in long warm strokes, and he speeds up his fingers and tongue to match her pace. The wordless sounds she makes tell him _good good good._

When he sucks hard on her clit, she clenches down over the fingers pressed deep inside her, pulls his hips down to take him all the way into her mouth, farther than he thought was possible. She comes apart beneath him, rucking up her hips and tugging on his, and her gasping moans are a wave from his erection to his brain.

With his fingers in his mouth, full of the taste of her, he comes in her mouth, her hands rubbing his thighs. His body says _good good good_ , matching Rey’s soft sounds. But as soon as his brain catches up he curls up next to her, and she pulls his head onto her chest. She rubs his shoulders, his head, as he fights the nausea.

“Do you know why I liked that so much?” she asks.

“Was it good?”

“So good. Extra good,” she says, “because I could feel how good you felt too.”

* * *

Rey’s scrolling through rental listings on her phone as they sit on the roof.

“You can stay as long as you want,” he says, trying not to think about how many times he’s already said it.

“I want to. But I don’t know how much longer I can stand to be this close to Plutt,” she says.

He feels suddenly brave but doesn’t know if he deserves to. “Then I’ll come with you,” he says. “We’ll go together.”

Ben’s bleached-out plastic chair makes a terrible cracking sound as Rey sprawls out over his chest, smiling up into his face.

* * *

“I want to be inside you,” he says, “but I don’t know if I can do it. If I can handle the guilt.”

“But you have been inside me. You’ve been inside my mouth, my hands, my head. If you aren’t ready for that kind of inside yet, then we can wait. There’s so many things we can do.”

* * *

They find a small house in a new city. Closer to Ben’s parents, who he hasn’t seen in ages. They can’t go up on the roof, but they have their own tiny backyard.

Rey builds them a deck, and Ben plants hydrangeas around it. They sleep out there in the spring, when it’s dry, and in the summer Ben licks watermelon juice from Rey’s fingers.

**Author's Note:**

> Goose extraordinaire [@musical_milk_](https://twitter.com/musical_milk_) has drawn us an adorable rooftop geeselo 🥺 go tell Mia how talented she is on twitter 💕
> 
> I'm on Twitter at [@van1lla_v1lla1n](https://twitter.com/van1lla_v1lla1n). Come say hi (and/or dm me about tags/content questions there if needed).
> 
> Comments and kudos are like little hugs and I appreciate them so much 💕
> 
> If you liked this, I think you might also like [Strong Black Coffee](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23762365), another sort of introspective multichapter modern AU but from Rey's POV (cw anxiety and panic disorder)


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